​Yardsss tends toward the dark and droning and bombastic, with heady, swelling orchestrations. Perhaps because human voices appear so rarely and the music is so evocative, it occasionally brings to mind Emeralds' Does It Look Like I'm Here? It doesn't take many listens to understand that Krueger is breaking boundaries not for the sake of being (or seeming) transgressive, but to make sounds that awaken actual feelings—uplifting, inspiring emotions. - Portland Mercury

​The first full-length album from Portland's Yardsss ØØØ is now available to stream and download wherever fine music is sold and streamed. We'll let the album speak for itself... as well as some music writersss...

"Regarding Krist Krueger's Yardsss: If you read about it before listening, you'd likely mistake it for a liberal arts master's thesis. Where most bands play "shows," Yardsss puts on "performance case studies" and multimedia installations, including a collection of songs inspired by—not covers of!—avant-garde composer John Cage. All this could be completely obnoxious except for one thing: Yardsss is transcendentally, earth-shatteringly gorgeous. If you can make music like that, you get to call your show a case study." - Portland Mercury

"Masterfully cohesive listen not for the faint of heart; immerse yourself in chaos and find wabi-sabi in the soothing ferocity of an album straddling shoegaze, electronica and psychedelia as one unifying tone for the present day. It will blow your fucking mind." - Echoes And Dust

Music is medicine. A new multi-venue, multi-day festival is on the eve of its inaugural launch February 15th, 16th and 17th in the form of a large-scale benefit for organizations vital to our community all centrally located in downtown Portland at Star Theater, Dante's, Kelly's Olympian and Valentine's. The first annual event includes Outside In, Q Center, P:ear, Right 2 Survive, Planned Parenthood and the NAACP.​Not only is Rx Fest a means to raise money for those organizations but also another opportunity to provide a platform for community outreach and engagement where representatives from each nonprofit can speak directly to the public about their respective missions and services.

Through this one of the foundational cornerstones of the festival is apparent, to engage and assist the dialogue of health, both mental and physical, and wellness in our community by not only connecting individuals to the services available through the festival's selected nonprofit partners but also through one of the most healing environmental sources, live music and community.

Rx Fest was an idea incubating for several years, essentially utilizing the template of the annual Self Group Collective BDAY Bash fundraisers for Outside In, also held in February, and vastly expanding that concept with an exponentially larger scope. If a festival has a mentality or ethos this is one of community and collaborative collective effort.

We fully embrace and celebrate that this is a revival of our multi-venue festival history in Portland, tapping prior incarnations of NXNW and MusicfestNW, to carry the contemporary torch. What we are ultimately doing is creating an opportunity for our community to come together, to together help ensure the vitality and viability of vital institutions while dually celebrating and supporting our wealth of incredible local music.

It's no accident this is happening during the most wintry month of the year. Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham tells us that we're crazy for trying to organize a festival on Valentine's weekend. Challenge accepted. We think this weekend is the best time to have an amazing reason to rally the crew and get out of the house.

We hope you'll join us this first year as we build slowly and get our feet wet (figuratively and likely literally) to kick off what we hope to be an event we'll all look forward to with enthusiasm and excitement for the many February's to follow.

Music as medicine. Portland has a new multi-venue music festival in Rx Fest. Launching in 2019 the festival will be held annually on Valentine's weekend. The first year of the fest is centered downtown at venues including Star Theater, Dante's, Valentine's, Kelly's Olympian, Paris Theater and the Crystal Ballroom.

The entire festival is a massive benefit for multiple organizations to be announced shortly and its intended purpose is not only to be a community rallying point but a means to raise those organizations that directly impact the well-being of our city.

Many more announcements to come so stay tuned and in the meantime follow the fest on social media to keep up!

July 2nd marks the four year anniversary, originally released in 2013, of the first full Yardsss release and film, Foma, and the first in the three-part triptych Vonnegut inspired and dedicated series.

Chicago by way of Seattle experimental dark-ambient audiovisual artist OKA amnesia releases their latest effort 'Rabbit Holes [andotherexits] on June 6th! Here's a bio straight from the artists typographical fingertips...

"Rabbit Holes [andotherexits] was a tape I didn't mean to make. Somehow this year amidst four separate hospitalizations, I managed to record some deeper, darker, closer to death levels of being. I didn't decide to put these recordings together till my last hospitalization, three weeks ago, for a heart attack. Unable to leave the hospital bed, I started sifting through multiple batches of recordings from last winter and conceptualizing this tape. Having experienced a trip to the void and the infinite spiral of unraveling self and reality that is death, Rabbit Holes [andotherexits] was a title that came quite naturally. Krist Krueger (spearhead of Yardsss and the label Self Group) did all of the mixing and I managed to get a rush order of tapes done before my June/July tour, and made some DIY style acrylic laser cut packaging." - Amnesia Bardos

Yardsss ØØØ main creative force and project ringleader, Krist Krueger, has just released two new literary pieces exclusive to the SG Blahg below. Without further adieu...

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You're Literally Not Literally Doing Nothing

Paul reminded me today of a part of myself that I'd somehow lost or at the least suppressed and anchored so deeply it would at best be an afterthought, its defensive properties entirely lost when needed most. It's the part that says 'no' and says so for myself. The part that sticks up for myself in the moment, not after the fact when I'm alone and my mind latches on to the negative internal reactions it seems to excel in manufacturing.

When I was a teenager growing up in that small blue collar town everyone knew; from teachers to city council members and even some police that if they didn't want to go round after round on ethics and moral fortitude they should turn the other way.

I once and very vocally berated and condemned a police officer for issuing me a noise violation at a show I threw in a garage until he finally just drove off. Adults said I had 'no respect for authority' and they were right. I also had no fear and indeed gave no respect to those who didn't offer it in kind. Of course I showed up for that court date, effectively defended myself and got the fine dropped.

Two weeks later I walked off my job after I defended the kitchen staff from another bought of our trust-funded abusive alcoholic boss's infantile temperament who then held a butcher's blade just under my chin and maniacally screamed 'you wanna get fucking cut right fucking now!?' for the entire dining room to hear. I just stood firmly and stared intensely but calmly in his eyes until he dropped the knife on the floor and stormed back to the bar. Guess his mother who owned the place put him on 'administrative leave' for a while after that. Fire in my guts, confidence and no time for bullshit at fifteen years old.

I'd been convincing myself that I still had it knowing full well that even if I did I wasn't using it for me. It's easy to delude ones self when those attributes are still present, when it's always there for friends, for community, for anyone other than yourself. Like a soldier with a martyr complex always volunteering for the front line repeating 'I'll be the shield against all enemies for all others but the bullet meant for me I'll just take and lay down.' I suppose everyone sees themselves as a savior sometimes. The grand sacrifice, blaze of glory, only this blaze never dies down. It's a series of self-effacing breaths continuously stoking the flame and no rain to dampen the pyre. The wider the burn radius the greater the subjugation and the less of myself allowed to remain present while somehow still convinced self-preservation is an active ally.​It's been fourteen years since I've felt truly empowered. Fourteen years until Paul reminded me just today. I'm gonna fight like hell to remember, to keep this close again, to control the flame as best I can and stop being so agreeable and forgiving when it causes me pain. Maybe it's time for others to ask my forgiveness and maybe it's time I only offer it when I can, when it feels right, and keep some of that fire in my guts for myself.

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It Keeps You Even At Rest

Seat yourself in a dark room, close your eyes and detach. Imagine your skeleton representing your past is one step behind and the skeleton which is your future is one step ahead. Imagine you as you perceive yourself between them, all three marching, left-right, in time with the ticking of the clock's second hand. That's the reality of time, it keeps you even at rest. You never cease marching forward, it never slows or pauses. We are perpetually marching forward until we cease to be as shall our past, present and future. We were born in a flash and so quickly shall we also bow. Sleep soundly and may your dreams be infinite.

Yardsss ​∅∀‡ in its newly full band formation as a three-piece including Krist Krueger, Paul Michael Schaefer and Robin Allen Levy hit the road in April and May throughout the pacific northwest. Dates and event page links belooow.

The creative sign-up sheet, an effort to help promote and discover all of the amazing artistic endeavors by members of our creative community who happen to be participating as attendees for our events, was full for the (((Sound|Sight))) March 30th multidisciplinary event at The Projection Museum in Portland! The event included visual art from Heidi Elise Wirz, Leslie Dorcus and Krist Krueger, sound art from Healersss, Institute for Creative Dying and Masonique and visual by Cari Gummer. Thank you so much to Colin Manning and The Projection Museum for hosting and keeping our rare all ages DIY event spaces alive. Links below!

​Yardsss launches a new, and first for the project, song-a-week series titled Epithets ØØØ as of March 1st 2017. The series, as with Krueger's six prior such series' features new material written, recorded and uploaded each week. The process is intended as a writing and skills exercise while also purging creatively. Epithets ØØØ will lead directly into writing and studio prep for the second full-length album to be titled Osia. In the meantime a new collection of all singles and collaborations is slated for release as of March 31st 2017 and the first full-length album Quietus is due out on June 9th 2017.

Avant-garde composer Yardsss is set to drop a new single, "333", the first release since 'Granfalloons' in February. An introspective effort crafting two thirty minute guitar sessions recorded between Krist Krueger and Sarah Nienaber (of Candace), each in one take. Then Krueger put his producer's skills into play, editing those guitar tracks down to three minutes and thirty seconds, picking particular melodic segments and fleshing out additional instrumentation to mold it into two different tracks that follow the same melody line and base.

"[Yardsss] Granfalloons is a masterfully cohesive listen not for the faint of heart; immerse yourself in chaos and find wabi-sabi in the soothing ferocity of an album straddling shoegaze, electronica and psychedelia as one unifying tone for the present day.Granfalloons will blow your fucking mind." - Echoes and Dust

Ambrosia Bartośekulva transcends the reality of time and space with other-worldly imagery, installation, performance and sound. Their masterminding reviles the commonplace and creates grandiose spaces for Man's mind to wander. Currently based in Chicago, they have also been extensively involved in the nitty-gritty underground of Seattle, WA, and toured the world over with their gutteral-yet-stained-glass-crystal sounds as wrtch and Stalebirth.

SG Family label-mates Yardsss and Wrtch embark on a package tour of the western US in May and June. Yardsss will be supporting the latest 'Granfalloons' release and Wrtch will be previewing the forthcoming and debut SG album, 'Sympathy For The Creator' due out this fall.

Team SG Blahg

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